Enter the Strong Communities Competition!

CommunityMatters™, in partnership with Ashoka’s Changemakers, has launched Strong Communities: Engaging Citizens, Strengthening Place, Inspiring Change, an innovative competition to find the best ways for citizens to connect and work to build vibrant, enduring places.

The vitality and quality of life in many small towns and urban neighborhoods is threatened by rampant, unsustainable growth. Other communities struggle economically and face challenges like unemployment, homelessness and substandard education.

When citizens rise to meet these challenges with creative solutions, leadership and collaboration, their communities thrive. Ashoka’s Changemakers and CommunityMatters, a project of the Orton Family Foundation, invite solutions that apply interdisciplinary approaches in which different people, organizations and fields join together and learn from each other to collectively solve problems.

Submissions will be accepted from June 16 to August 11, 2010 at www.changemakers.com/strongcommunities. The top three entries will win $5,000 each. The best entry submitted by 5PM EDT on July 14, 2010 will be eligible to win a $500 Early Entry Prize!

Eight Strong Communities competition finalists will be invited to attend the CommunityMatters’10 Conference in Denver, October 5-8, 2010 to showcase their work and collaborate with other leaders in the field.

“We’re excited to hear about innovations across the country—from neighbors banding together to revive the local economy to thriving community arts projects to engagement initiatives bringing new voices into community planning,” said Orton Family Foundation President and CEO Bill Roper. “We encourage all who care about their communities to submit their ideas, nominate projects and contribute to the discussion online.”

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